Ask stories

What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?

literal shower-thought i had tonight as i was thinking about how at work we all don't like dealing with our helm charts because the syntax and structure ends up looking so ugly and it just feels wrong (not to mention the multiple different approaches of handling kubernetes resources in multiple different pipelines.

i try to see beyond any initial repulsion to weird looking code because i know that it may be super functional. but it got me thinking: what makes code beautiful? what makes code "high quality"? (other than that it results in a working, performant, and robust software program obviously).

so i'm curious -- can you show me the best code you've encountered? it can be a small snippet or it can be a "slice of a library" or an architecture etc. have you written anything yourself that you are super proud of?

As I understand, the popular consensus today is that nginx+php-fpm performs faster than apache even with the mpm_event process management enabled?

But when it comes to real world usage, many production instances I observe these days still deploy apache a lot. Even cpanel based web hosting (shared or dedicated instances) are more often apache based than nginx.

Is it due to some old habits and dependence on apache specific features like .htaccess support? Or is it the case that apache has actually caught up in the race with ngnix and the performance difference is quite negligible these days?

I know I know. But I'm only asking because I've found myself unwillingly looking at it, cursing is existence and then forcing my browser to show me "the real damn GitHub project". I need the app for work 2FA hence I haven't ditched it. But every time I click a link (eg on HN) for a git project, what I'm interested in is the code with the last update date on the right. Instantly see how "dead" a project is. What happens when I have the GitHub app installed? It hijacks the URL and shows me stupid crap I don't care about. And if I click on "code" it shows me the kind of low-info list of files and folders I'd expect to see on my grandmother's windows explorer. Aaaaaaaaaa

Race condition, producer consumer, and cool stuffs like that? I do java

I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately because I’m pursuing a CS degree but I’ve been second guessing my decision because all I ever hear about now is people either getting laid off or new graduates having a hard time landing entry level roles, never mind the AI of it all not that I believe it is a feasible replacement for actual programmers but at the same time it’s hard to tell if it has the potential to be that later on. I’m still a couple years shy of graduation but it doesn’t seem like enough time for things to improve if ever.

I have spent the last few days trying (and failing) to find real cases where AI agents actually scale in production. Outside of coding agents and dev-productivity tools, I am struggling to see anything that looks like a genuinely scalable agent system.

Most of what people are calling “agents” today are basically deterministic workflows with one or two LLM calls glued together. That is not an agent. That is a at best API pipeline.

So I am genuinely curious: are there any real examples of agents handling large, messy, multi-step workflows at scale? Not demos, not toy projects, not VC decks.

I was recently laid off at a big tech company after 10 years. And now I am facing the harsh reality of trying to crack leetcode medium/hard problems (something I never managed to do routinely while I was working at this company). Is anyone here in a similar situation or has been in one? If so, how do you keep yourself motivated to solve multiple problems a day, especially knowing you are actually never going to work on such problems as part of an actual job?

Edit: I need to practice leetcode because the interview process for almost every software engineering role (especially in the Bay Area) seems to require going through at least one round of coding challenge based on leetcode medium/hard problem. I did not call it out earlier because I thought this is a very obvious point. Perhaps, I should have clarified that I am mostly targeting software engg roles.

As a tech parent I think one of the best things I did for both my son and daughter was for their first computer to help them to build and setup their own Linux computer (It was Ubuntu back then but they’ve both moved themselves to Arch these days).

We went together and bought a second hand desktop (exciting the people selling to us also) and when I got home I pulled out the Ram, HD and CD drive and set them aside; and then together with a screwdriver we “built the computer” over a few days.

In windows when a child goes searching the web for a “movie maker for windows” they are going to be in a world of hurt either finding expensive commercial options or super scammy sites promising the world.

By comparison on Linux if they search the local “app store” they’ll find stacks and stacks of free, useful, open licensed software.

My kids loved the power, freedom and later unexpected community this bought them.

Now my friend wants the same for their daughter who is 8 years old.

I’m planning to do the same and go with her parents and her and buy a second hand desktop together and then put Linux on it.

My question is where would you go from there? What suggestions do you have? What to install? Any mini “curriculums” or ideas?

Would love to hear your ideas and experiences. Linux with free and open software is the goal and focus.

I work at a mid-sized startup dealing with latency issues in customer-facing flows that use LLMs. Using OSS-120B seems preferable to 5-mini or Anthropic models in many cases when we need speed, intelligence, and cost control. Is there some catch here beyond needing to acquire higher rate limits?

Not many job openings available, pay is bad etc - that seems to be the current reality of the job market.

Those who are currently (or recently) interviewing, got job offers - what was the process like? Ignoring the FAANG companies for a second - how has the hiring process changed in the last 1-2 years, in the era of AI?

Are we still forced to solve leetcode type problems? Take home exercises? Could you please share your experience? Especially for mid-to-senior level programmers

I was doing some client work recently at a bank, where most of their engineering is offshored one of the big offshore companies.

The offshore team had to access everything via virtual desktops, and one of the restrictions was no virtualisation within the virtual desktop - so tooling like Docker was banned.

I was really surprsied to see modern JVM development going on, without access to things like TestContainers, LocalStack, or Docker at all.

To compound matters, they had a single shared dev env, (for cost reasons), so the team were constantly breaking each others stuff.

How common is this? Also, curious what kinds of workarounds people are using?

Theoretically, what would be the downside of replacing expensive CEOs with AI agents?

Hi HN, I’ve been exploring Lean 4, the theorem prover and programming language, and I’m impressed by what it offers for formal reasoning and proofs. However, it’s been difficult to find a structured, instructor-led course or organized study group (as opposed to just tutorials or documentation). Does anyone know of: University or online courses (open enrollment) teaching Lean 4 Any guided cohorts, bootcamps, or community study programs. My goal is to learn Lean 4 in a more systematic and interactive way — ideally with feedback, projects, or peer discussion. If you’ve taken such a course, organized one, or know where to look (e.g. Discords, Zulip groups, or university links), I’d love your pointers.

Thanks!

Hi all, I'm currently in a few ML classes and, while they do a great job covering theory, they don't cover application. At least not past some basic implementations in a Jupyter Notebook.

One friction point I keep running into is how to handle logging and evaluation of the models. Right now I'm using Jupyter Notebook, I'll train the model, then produce a few graphs for different metrics with the test set.

This whole workflow seems to be the standard among the folks in my program but I can't shake the feeling that it seems vibes-based and sub optimal.

I've got a few projects coming up and I want to use them as a chance to improve my approach to training models. What method works for you? Are there any articles or libraries that you would recommend? What do you wish Jr. Engineers new about this?

Thanks!

I am a software engineer with about 20 years of experience, and lately I have felt a bit lost about what to do going forward.

For the context, I have always been passionate about software engineering, I started very young and have worked in it non stop every since. I mostly worked broadly in web development and have pretty-much mastered all areas and layers of the stack (infra and cloud, databases, backend, network, front-end and even a bit of mobile...). I've also been an indie game dev on my free time ever since.

For the last 5~10 years I have not been evolving or learning anymore in my daily job, and feel that I've basically seen everything. It only feels repetitive, and as I've lived through many tech bubbles, I don't get much interested in the major trends because the fundamentals are the same and everything old gets new again.

Over the years, I've worked in many companies, from big ones to fresh startups, B2B and B2C, in direct and as a contractor as well as web dev agencies. I've also found out that while I like tech leading and the various design and spec phases of software, I don't like managing people. I do not want to evolve as a CTO either because of those reasons and the endless meetings. But the industry seems to think that the normal path forward is to quit being a developer and manage people instead, which is a totally alien idea to me because it involves completely different skills and knowledge.

I am now at a step in my career where I find it impossible to find a company where my knowledge and experience is really valued and useful. I'm often the most senior, more than even the managers and CTOs, but have less power or influence and am just another cog in the machine. I see the mistakes being made and know what it will cost (because I've been there and done that many times), I do my best to explain that and recommend alternatives, but more often than not it still happens anyway.

I've long considered switching to game dev professionally since I find that it has a lot more fun and interesting challenge, and I yet have lots of things to learn there. But as a husband and a dad, the reputation of the industry (low salary and crunch time) makes it difficult to seriously consider. I'm now thinking that freelancing my be my best bet going forward, and then explore and build things from here.

I know that there are more senior (30, 40+ years...) people around here, so I'm curious to hear your experiences. Did you ever feel the same way, what did you do and how did you finally find a satisfying daily job?

Seems like most tech right now is focused on driving engagement, profit, etc through addictive behaviours. I guess that's not news to anyone. Doomscrolling, swiping, etc. Anyone have some good alternatives. I decided to build something for myself to combat it, but wondered what other people are doing.

Just saw the CEO of Substack celebrating traffic from X/Twitter shooting up thinking they stopped suppressing tweets with links[0]. Actually, this traffic is because now any time you open a tweet with a link, the in-app webview loads in the background, and displays when you press the link.

I run an ecom store that gets a lot of its customers from Twitter. I was also shocked to see my traffic double or triple overnight and thought the algorithm had blessed me and my business. Soon realized what was actually happening. Thought other traffic-monitors might appreciate this explanation.

Meanwhile Nikita Bier is pretending they never suppressed tweets with links to begin with, offering the alternative explanation: "a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach. This is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to Like or Reply. So X doesn't get a clear signal whether the content is any good"[1]. A bit of a rewriting of history since Elon and his mom both tweeted about how it wasn't fair to use his platform to promote other links/platforms, even banning people who shared profiles of other social networks (including Paul Graham for a period). They suppressed all links shortly after.

[0] https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985464687350485092

[1] https://x.com/nikitabier/status/1979994223224209709

Please state the location and include REMOTE for remote work, REMOTE (US) or similar if the country is restricted, and ONSITE when remote work is not an option.

Please only post if you personally are part of the hiring company—no recruiting firms or job boards. One post per company. If it isn't a household name, explain what your company does.

Please only post if you are actively filling a position and are committed to responding to applicants.

Commenters: please don't reply to job posts to complain about something. It's off topic here.

Readers: please only email if you are personally interested in the job.

Searchers: try https://dheerajck.github.io/hnwhoishiring/, http://nchelluri.github.io/hnjobs/, https://hnresumetojobs.com, https://hnhired.fly.dev, https://kennytilton.github.io/whoishiring/, https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com, or this (unofficial) Chrome extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hn-hiring-pro/mpfal....

Don't miss this other fine thread: Who wants to be hired? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45800464

Is anybody still using TUI applications for business?

My family company is a wholesale distribution firm (with lightweight manufacturing) and has been using the same TUI application (on prem unix box) since 1993. We use it for customer management, ordering, invoicing, kit management/build tickets, financials - everything. We've transitioned from green screen terminals to modern emulators, but the core system remains. I spent many summers running serial and ethernet cables.

I left the business years ago to become a full time software engineer, but I got my start as a script kiddie writing automations for this system with Microsoft Access, VBA, and SendKeys to automate data entry. Amazingly, they still have a Windows XP machine running many of those tasks I wrote back in 2004! It's brittle, but cumulatively has probably saved years of time. That XP machine could survive a nuclear winter lol.

I recently stepped back in to help my parents and spent a day converting many of those old scripts to a more modern system (with actual error-handling instead of strategic sleep()s and prayers) using Python and telnetlib3. I had a blast and still love this application. I can fly around in it. Training new people was always a pain, but for those that got it—they had super powers.

This got me thinking: Are other companies still using this type of interface to drive their core operations? I’m reflecting on whether the only reason my family's business still uses this system is because of the efficiency hacks I put in place 20+ years ago. Without them, would they have been forced to switch to a modern cloud/GUI system? I’m not sure if I’m blinded by nostalgia or if this application is truly as wonderful as I remember it.

I’d love to hear if and how these are still being utilized in the real world.

P.S. The system we use was originally sold by ADP and has had different names (D2K, Prophet21). I believe Epicor owns it now (Activant before).

P.P.S. Is anybody migrating their old TUI automation scripts to a more modern framework or creating new ones? I’m super curious to compare notes and see what other people are doing.

An industrial-scale program analysis framework on LLVM, with multiple intermediate representations, alias analyses, interprocedural dataflow analysis engines, and more.

https://github.com/ZJU-Automated-Reasoning-Group/lotus

I've been thinking over this and I don't think Screen time, clicks, etc are relevant to me.

Something like categorisation of conversations, whether the user is happy at the end or not, is the user frustrated, etc.

Only these come to mind to me. How are y'all doing it currently?

I'm a junior. Truth be told, I don't really care if professionals/adults see my code or pick it apart/mock it/fork it or whatever. All my repos are private just because I worry about other students being lazy and just ripping my hard work and claiming it as their own. That really pisses me off when I hear some horror stories like that.

Is this unfounded? Or do I have a right for some concern? It's obviously easier for viewers to just see public code repos and browse without ever requesting access so I know I'm losing some traffic (from my portfolio site)

I was thinking the alternative would be just linking my demo on my portfolio site as a proof of concept that yes I made it, yes it works, and if you're curious , here's a link to the code u can request independently of github.

Thank you in advance.